OT Ants

[Mr Pounder Esquire]

I dug over the flower beds last week. The next day I found a few ants on the bathroom window ledge. We live in a bungalow, the kitchen is on the same wall as the bathroom. Killed the bathroom ants, they have not come back there. Since then we have been finding a few ants in the kitchen, always in the same place but not everyday. For a few nights I've left a plate out with sugar on it. This to attract the ants and lead me to where they are coming from. Not an ant in sight! We are very clean, but crumbs in a kitchen are unavoidable. I've just given the ant area a very good bleaching. The weather here has been very mild, but it has pissed it down every day. I've read that ants do not like getting wet and will go into a house when it rains for 40 days and 40 nights.

The main question is: has anybody else had an ant problem?

[Nick]

Last year. A few occasionally in the kitchen. Went on for months. Eventually I located a nest outside around the side of my house. Ant Stop put an end to it. I should have looked harder, earlier.

Anything you do in the Kitchen is just a stop gap, I don't think cleanliness makes that much difference. Spray poisons in the kitchen will stop them temporarily but you really need to search and destroy the nest.

I will probably go around outside my house with AntStop soon just as a precaution.

[Mr Pounder Esquire]

I've looked all around the outside of the house. I've also looked in the flower bed that I dug over. Not a single ant in sight. I've looked everywhere in the house, not a single ant. I have saved the link to Ant Stop. Cheers.

[Nick]

Get the big cylinder of AntStop Granules not the little trap things.

I think because it is early in the year the nest may be small and so hard to spot. Just sprinkle the granules all around the house, hopefully that will get them.

However keep looking in the future just in case. If they do come back try a different poison.

[Mr Pounder Esquire]

I'll give it a crack. Is this stuff okay when it rains?

[Martin Brown]

The odd ones will scout around and if they find anything a small line of ants will develop until the food source is entirely consumed.

They are en route to something else. Find out what.

This is a very bad idea. If they find a serious food source you will have more difficulty getting rid of them. We had a problem not unlike the one you describe with a glass food jar containing candied peel which had an ant sized gap in one corner of what was supposed to be an airtight seal. The result was a roughly 1 to 1 mix of peel and ants by the time we found it after only a couple of days.

Find the nest nearest the kitchen and offer it some ant bait if you must. There are many ants nests in a garden you can't kill them all.

Find and eliminate the food source they are raiding in the kitchen and they will stop coming. You may need to clean the surfaces since ants follow scent trails to find food sites previously visited by workers.

[Mr Pounder Esquire]

I can't find out where the things are coming from! When/if I do I'll try your suggestion. Thanks for your reply.

[Mr Pounder Esquire]

The plate with the sugar on was on the other side of the kitchen. I've yet to see an ant on this side of the kitchen.

If only I could find just one nest!

I've used plenty of Domestos on all of the worktops and in the cupboards.

[Brian Gaff]

Something I cannot see these days, but if you have a concrete floor they do seem to find ways up through cracks. Brian

[Martin Brown]

You are going about it the wrong way. You put the (poison) bait as close to the door as possible and use something other than highly refined sugar so that they can smell it. The last thing you want is a long line of ants trekking across your kitchen floor.

ISTR some of our university halls of residence had pharaoh ants which proved impossible to dislodge no matter what level of fumigation and other techniques were tried. The boiler room cockroaches were worst.

It is probably still quite small as yet, but look along the house brickwork for a small hole and a pile of sand.

You really need to find the food source they are scouting for and/or put some more attractive poison bait where they can easily find it.

[Nick]

I have always assumed not. I wait until it looks dry for a few days and then sprinkle it in the evening.

I have also tried "Nippon Ant Killer Liquid". This seemed better because it was easier to spread around. Last year it wiped out a large nest with one shake.

However I suspect ants build immunity to specific poisons. So it is worth trying one for a bit and changing the next time you try. I sometimes use "Nippon Ant Killer Powder" for variety.

[Dave Liquorice]

Ants? Oh yes, I remember them. Don't have ants up here.

[Huge]

They're all here. Sandy soil - it's a nightmare.

[Graeme]

+1

We rarely see ants, or snails, or slugs. We have various hostas in the garden and, down south, they would be shredded. Up here in Aberdeenshire, it just doesn't happen. The other side of that coin is

-3.7 and snow earlier this morning.

[Dave Liquorice]

Zero ants, small rams horn type snails only. Slugs, big black ones,

2+ " long, you don't want to catch one with the strimmer... They tend to stick to the unmown and ungrazed part of the in bye rather than invade the "garden".

Lillies for us, lilly beatle larva would have 'em down south. Not up here,

4 to 5" this morning but thawing, only just got to 0C overnight and it's 2 C now.

[Harry Bloomfield]

Big garden with soil on top of thick clay, on N/W Yorks boundary and we get lots of them in the garden. We were only once troubled by them in the house, built on a solid concrete raft. They were near the fridge three years ago. Sprinkling Nippon powder under it quickly fixed that.

[Mr Pounder Esquire]

After using loads of bleach and leaving it on all night I've not (yet) seen an ant. When/if, it stops slashing it down I'll go down on my knees and inspect around the house.

[Mr Pounder Esquire]

If they comeback, instead of killing them I'll look for their point of entry. In the past I've just killed them. Thanks.

[PeterC]

I had ants in the lounge, but only on 1 day a year. They'd appear on a warm, sunny humid day to swarm and then gone. I could see the approx. place but always too late to see them actually crawling out, mainly because they weren't in sight until they'd all swarmed. Eventually I got rid of them by going round the outside of the house in dry weather to spot the little heaps of fine soil, then raking it out a bit and putting powder in. Had to be careful as the small heaps with bigger holes were bees and I didn't want to kill those.

[Nick]

Last autumn I was preparing some ground to lay grass. I saw a large bumble bee sleepily crawl away from the spot where I had been picking weeds out with my hands. I smiled and let it wake up and eventually fly away. It was only later that I realised that the bastard had stung me. My whole arm swelled up in what they call a "large scale local reaction". I now have a 10% change of anaphylactic shock the next time I'm stung.

From now on, ants or bees, it is kill them, kill them all!